Articles | Volume 12, issue 4
https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-12-907-2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-12-907-2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Research article
| Highlight paper
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19 Aug 2024
Research article | Highlight paper |
| 19 Aug 2024
| 19 Aug 2024
Sourcing and long-range transport of particulate organic matter in river bedload: Río Bermejo, Argentina
GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany
Institute of Geosciences, Universität Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
Niels Hovius
GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany
Institute of Geosciences, Universität Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
Marisa Repasch
Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA
Joel Scheingross
Department of Geological Sciences and Engineering, University of Nevada Reno, Nevada Geosciences, Reno, NV, USA
Jens M. Turowski
GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany
Stefanie Tofelde
Institute of Geological Sciences, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
Oliver Rach
GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany
Dirk Sachse
GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany
Department of Geography, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
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Earth Surf. Dynam., 13, 593–605, https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-13-593-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-13-593-2025, 2025
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This paper presents a novel model that predicts how gravel riverbeds may evolve in response to differences in the frequency and severity of flood events. We test our model using a 23-year-long record of river flow and gravel transport from the Swiss Prealps. We find that our model reliably captures yearly patterns in gravel transport in this setting. Our new model is a major advance towards better predictions of river erosion that account for the flood history of a gravel-bed river.
Charlotte Läuchli, Nestor Gaviria-Lugo, Anne Bernhardt, Hella Wittmann, Patrick J. Frings, Mahyar Mohtadi, Andreas Lückge, and Dirk Sachse
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-3153, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-3153, 2025
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Large-scale atmospheric pathways connecting climate across latitudes are poorly documented in the past. Here, we report a high resolution spatial and temporal reconstruction of the evolution of the Southern Hemisphere Westerlies since the Last Glacial Maximum, which, compared with the past evolution of the Intertropical Convergence Zone, allows identifying the dominant atmospheric pathways acting on past climate in South America.
Fergus McNab, Taylor F. Schildgen, Jens Martin Turowski, and Andrew D. Wickert
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2468, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2468, 2025
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Alluvial rivers form networks, but many concepts we use to analyse their long-term evolution derive from models that treat them as single streams. We develop a model including tributary interactions and show that, while patterns of sediment output can be similar for network and single-segment models, complex signal propagation affects aggradation and incision within networks. We argue that understanding a specific catchment's evolution requires a model with its specific network structure.
Matanya Hamawi, Joel P. L. Johnson, Susan Bilek, Jens M. Turowski, and John B. Laronne
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-591, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-591, 2025
This preprint is open for discussion and under review for Earth Surface Dynamics (ESurf).
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Water level suddenly rises during flash floods in dry regions having a distinct impact on bedload – large sediment rolling and saltating on the riverbed. Using sensor-equipped pebbles and seismic monitoring in a field setting, we demonstrate that bedload activity is very high in both shallow and deep sudden flows. These findings can help improve bedload transport models, particularly when using seismic sensors, by providing new insights into bedload dynamics.
Jens M. Turowski, Fergus McNab, Aaron Bufe, and Stefanie Tofelde
Earth Surf. Dynam., 13, 97–117, https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-13-97-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-13-97-2025, 2025
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Channel belts comprise the area affected by a river due to lateral migration and floods. As a landform, they affect water resources and flood hazard, and they often host unique ecological communities. We develop a model describing the evolution of channel-belt area over time. The model connects the behaviour of the river to the evolution of the channel belt over a timescale of centuries. A comparison to selected data from experiments and real river systems verifies the random walk approach.
Elizabeth N. Orr, Taylor F. Schildgen, Stefanie Tofelde, Hella Wittmann, and Ricardo N. Alonso
Earth Surf. Dynam., 12, 1391–1413, https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-12-1391-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-12-1391-2024, 2024
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Fluvial terraces and alluvial fans in the Toro Basin, NW Argentina, record river evolution and global climate cycles over time. Landform dating reveals lower-frequency climate cycles (100 kyr) preserved downstream and higher-frequency cycles (21/40 kyr) upstream, supporting theoretical predications that longer rivers filter out higher-frequency climate signals. This finding improves our understanding of the spatial distribution of sedimentary paleoclimate records within landscapes.
Jens Martin Turowski, Aaron Bufe, and Stefanie Tofelde
Earth Surf. Dynam., 12, 493–514, https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-12-493-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-12-493-2024, 2024
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Fluvial valleys are ubiquitous landforms, and understanding their formation and evolution affects a wide range of disciplines from archaeology and geology to fish biology. Here, we develop a model to predict the width of fluvial valleys for a wide range of geographic conditions. In the model, fluvial valley width is controlled by the two competing factors of lateral channel mobility and uplift. The model complies with available data and yields a broad range of quantitative predictions.
Chuanqi He, Ci-Jian Yang, Jens M. Turowski, Richard F. Ott, Jean Braun, Hui Tang, Shadi Ghantous, Xiaoping Yuan, and Gaia Stucky de Quay
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 1151–1166, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-1151-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-1151-2024, 2024
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The shape of drainage basins and rivers holds significant implications for landscape evolution processes and dynamics. We used a global 90 m resolution topography to obtain ~0.7 million drainage basins with sizes over 50 km2. Our dataset contains the spatial distribution of drainage systems and their morphological parameters, supporting fields such as geomorphology, climatology, biology, ecology, hydrology, and natural hazards.
Nestor Gaviria-Lugo, Charlotte Läuchli, Hella Wittmann, Anne Bernhardt, Patrick Frings, Mahyar Mohtadi, Oliver Rach, and Dirk Sachse
Biogeosciences, 20, 4433–4453, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-20-4433-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-20-4433-2023, 2023
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We analyzed how leaf wax hydrogen isotopes in continental and marine sediments respond to climate along one of the strongest aridity gradients in the world, from hyperarid to humid, along Chile. We found that under extreme aridity, the relationship between hydrogen isotopes in waxes and climate is non-linear, suggesting that we should be careful when reconstructing past hydrological changes using leaf wax hydrogen isotopes so as to avoid overestimating how much the climate has changed.
Jens M. Turowski, Gunnar Pruß, Anne Voigtländer, Andreas Ludwig, Angela Landgraf, Florian Kober, and Audrey Bonnelye
Earth Surf. Dynam., 11, 979–994, https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-11-979-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-11-979-2023, 2023
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Rivers can cut into rocks, and their strength modulates the river's erosion rates. Yet, which properties of the rock control its response to erosive action is poorly understood. Here, we describe parallel experiments to measure rock erosion rates under fluvial impact erosion and the rock's geotechnical properties such as fracture strength, elasticity, and density. Erosion rates vary over a factor of a million between different rock types. We use the data to improve current theory.
Ci-Jian Yang, Pei-Hao Chen, Erica D. Erlanger, Jens M. Turowski, Sen Xu, Tse-Yang Teng, Jiun-Chuan Lin, and Jr-Chuang Huang
Earth Surf. Dynam., 11, 475–486, https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-11-475-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-11-475-2023, 2023
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Observations of the interaction between extreme physical erosion and chemical weathering dynamics are limited. We presented major elements of stream water in the badland catchment at 3 h intervals during a 3 d typhoon. The excess sodium in the evaporite deposits causes material dispersion through deflocculation, which enhances the suspended sediment flux. Moreover, we observed a shift from predominantly evaporite weathering at peak precipitation to silicate weathering at peak discharge.
Aaron Bufe, Kristen L. Cook, Albert Galy, Hella Wittmann, and Niels Hovius
Earth Surf. Dynam., 10, 513–530, https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-10-513-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-10-513-2022, 2022
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Erosion modulates Earth's carbon cycle by exposing a variety of lithologies to chemical weathering. We measured water chemistry in streams on the eastern Tibetan Plateau that drain either metasedimentary or granitoid rocks. With increasing erosion, weathering shifts from being a CO2 sink to being a CO2 source for both lithologies. However, metasedimentary rocks typically weather 2–10 times faster than granitoids, with implications for the role of lithology in modulating the carbon cycle.
Odin Marc, Jens M. Turowski, and Patrick Meunier
Earth Surf. Dynam., 9, 995–1011, https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-9-995-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-9-995-2021, 2021
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The size of grains delivered to rivers is an essential parameter for understanding erosion and sediment transport and their related hazards. In mountains, landslides deliver these rock fragments, but few studies have analyzed the landslide properties that control the resulting sizes. We present measurements on 17 landslides from Taiwan and show that their grain sizes depend on rock strength, landslide depth and drop height, thereby validating and updating a previous theory on fragmentation.
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Editor
Many previous studies have examined the transfer of organic carbon in river systems within suspended sediment (fine particles carried in suspension making the water appear muddy etc..), however, few have looked at how much carbon is transported with bedload (coarser sand and pebbles that bounce along the base of the channel). This paper looks at the fluxes of carbon in the bedload and finds they are a far smaller percentage than that carried as suspended load, but may be more important for long term sinks or stores of carbon as they are more readily deposited in sediments that may become buried for a considerable period of time.
Many previous studies have examined the transfer of organic carbon in river systems within...
Short summary
The transport of plant debris in rivers is an important part of the global carbon cycle and influences atmospheric carbon levels through time. We sampled plant debris at the bed of a lowland river and determined the sources as it is transported hundreds of kilometers. Plant debris can persist at the riverbed, but mechanical breakdown reduces its amount, and it is only a small fraction compared to the suspended load. This plant debris and transport patterns need further investigation globally.
The transport of plant debris in rivers is an important part of the global carbon cycle and...
